There are phrases constructed of words that do not belong
together. For days, one of those phrases
has been and will be broadcast over every television and radio station in America. “Today another six year old was laid to
rest.” The last thing that a six year
old should be doing is resting. Six
years old is the time of life of perpetual motion at full speed. Words are completely inadequate to the task
of describing a lifeless six year old body – laid to rest isn’t close.
At 9:30 this morning bells tolled and voices stilled. In groups or sitting alone, people remembered
the lives of twenty children and the 6 adults who perished while using every
ounce of their being to protect children from malevolence. Newtown knows that it is not alone in its
grief. Pain remains unabated.
In the search for explanations, some have blamed the easy
access to guns as the linchpin that set events in motion. Others have leapt upon the presumed diagnosis
of Asperger’s Syndrome as an explanation for the confluence of actions that
allowed hundreds of rounds of ammunition to fly. The absurdity of such conclusions confounds
our efforts to do better.
Mental illness is complex and unique to each individual
afflicted. Generalizing autism or
Asperger’s as causative of violence is simply false. In the same way, a gun that sits alone
without a human finger to pull the trigger is benign. The Sandy Hook tragedy does not appear to
have been the result of a momentary, passionate, angry loss of control by the
shooter – it looks like actions that were carefully planned over a period of
time like an effective military assault.
Autism is certainly a disease that is characterized by a
different kind of mental processing. Sensory
stimuli overloads must sound like a clanging noise in his head. He might be unable to communicate clearly his
wants or desires and sometimes shows a verbal or physical tantrum of
frustration. It does not show up as a
deliberative process of planning, step by step, action by action, the
purposeful murdering of defenseless children.
Guns are inanimate.
They won’t fire themselves. Most
of the time when they are fired in anger, there are only enough casualties to
make the local news but the total comes to over 32,000. There are people who believe that guns form
the dike that holds the government at bay.
These same people drive the roads, draw Medicare, Medicaid, social
security, drink pure water, are defended by soldiers and access the courts – in
short, use the government. But we
self-govern. The government is us. As Pogo so famously said, “We have met the
enemy and he is us.” When a person opts
to refrain from voting in the belief that a gun used to kill other citizens is
a better way to formulate public policy, self-governance fails.
This Cigar Box is not intended to enter in on political
debate. There is enough of that to fill
the air with noise, recrimination and false logic based on mischaracterized
facts. Opinion should be the soil that
feeds the compromises necessary for self-governance not the justification for polarization
and division. My opinions are worth no
more, and no less, than any citizen’s.
Nothing I could write would be new to this debate about mental health nor
guns. Opinions are in sufficient
supply. What we lack is the will to move
forward, to compromise, to respect the differences among us, to find ways to strike
a social contract in this place where we govern ourselves. It has been hard to quit thinking about Sandy Hook but this bypass taken In the Cigar Box will end
with this entry in the hope that our will to act is reborn.
Christmas is just
four days away. A two year old just ran
through the office shrieking with joy and ready for Santa to make a visit to
his house. Holiday music fills public
spaces as well as the quiet corners of minds open to the magic of the
season. Families from Newtown will be
consumed with saying goodbye to loved ones but there is hope that the eternal
promise of Christmas will plant new seeds in their hearts and minds. People by the millions have committed to do
26 acts of kindness in honor of the fallen.
How great is that? Get ready for Christmas! My wish is that regardless of your faith
tradition, in the coming days you will feel the joy of making peace with
someone and of hugging a six or seven year old child.
--td